The Challenger's Return: Rebirth of the Rainbow Mage

Otto stopped spying on Jeremy as the boy re-entered the arena with renewed spirit.

The slight smile on his lips was gone as fast as it appeared.

Ramesthes had racked his brain trying to present Jeremy with a challenge.

Normally, he picked up anything he was taught much too quickly to spend any length of time on it.

Moreover, while he did make mistakes, Jeremy never forgot the things he learned. Especially if they were related to melee combat.

So Otto gave Ramesthes a new idea to utilize a little-known function of the virtual arena.

One of the items Drennel sent over for Jeremy was a skill book.

[Basic Dagger Wielding]

Though its title was rather common, it was a surprisingly rare skill.

In fact, all of the 'basic' weapon wielding skills were extremely expensive when exchanged for merits in the [Tower].

Most weren't able to afford them until they saved and reached Area 2 or 3.

It was for two reasons.

First, they didn't require energy to use.

Every weapon-wielding skill simply provided flat 'bonuses' which improved every part of a challenger's technique.

Second, they were each the start of a series.

As soon as a challenger had the 'basic' version of the skill, they would get access to the following skills, too, as long as they trained hard enough to attain the maximum level of each.

It was similar to professions, in a way.

These specific weapon-wielding skills could only be learned by physical and combination classes.

With the exception of weapon focused classes, combination classes could pick up at most one of these skills, while pure physical classes could pick up at most two.

Meanwhile, the skills were inordinately versatile.

The basic skill for dagger wielding encompassed thrusting, slashing, and stabbing with the dagger as well as footwork, positioning, stance, and form.

It was THE manual for the most basic way to wield a dagger.

Normally, the contents and knowledge in the manual would be directly implanted into Jeremy's mind.

Then, Jeremy would work to level the skill by fighting stronger and stronger opponents and perfecting his form little by little.

But Otto told Ramesthes to use a different method.

Here, Ramesthes instead plugged the skill into Jeremy's virtual pod.

Via the arena, the virtual pod would create an opponent specifically geared towards helping Jeremy level [Basic Dagger Wielding].

In other words, the 'man' Jeremy was facing was not a real person.

He was a 'robot' created by the virtual arena that specifically embodied the dagger wielding skill, always remaining a step ahead of Jeremy's own achievements.

Jeremy wouldn't 'receive' the skill until he reached Level 10 in each aspect.

Meaning he'd get no corrective benefit from the skill itself until then.

The benefit was that his movements with the dagger would be faster, more intuitive, and more ingrained.

The drawback was that this method of learning was usually much slower.

Well, for Jeremy, this didn't even count as a drawback.

It was already incredible that he had reached what would be 'level 3' overall in a matter of a few weeks.

And with the ultimate 'veteran' battling him constantly, Jeremy was sure to continue to make humongous strides.

But Otto wasn't going to tell him that.

It was best if Jeremy didn't know how extraordinary he was…

************************************************************************

After an hour's break, Otto began his own training routine for the day.

He first woke up and ate a faux-breakfast composed of fried eggs, bacon, and pancakes, then walked outside of his 'mountain house,' for a brisk half-hour sprint.

His breath came out in puffs of white smoke. Otto let the chill in the air invigorate him.

Once he felt healthy and energized, he stretched quickly and sat down cross legged on the grass.

His consciousness stretched out to feel the surrounding mana in the atmosphere.

Wisps of mana-smoke entered his body and automatically condensed to slowly become part of his own mana.

Slowly but surely, his mana pool began to grow.

Otto also used the trick he'd learned over the last training session to cycle his mana while meditating.

Both his mana pool and his regeneration grew in tandem.

He stayed like this for four hours, until his mind was at peace.

By this time, the sun was peeking over the mountain, bathing the meadow behind his small cottage in a golden glow.

Some might find extremely still practice like this to be boring.

Otto rather thought it was relaxing instead.

Especially since when he was meditating, it always felt like he had all the time in the world.

Otto genuinely believed he could probably spend entire years doing nothing but meditating…

But all good things came to an end.

When four hours were up, Otto began his most grueling part of the day.

Increasing his intuition attribute.

Truth be told, Otto had always been a person who liked to work with his mind.

Reading, solving puzzles, analyzing the motivations and schemes of others: all of this was right up his alley.

But spending twelve hours in a row, day after day, analyzing the exact same spell models over and over again...

It wasn't long before the rote practice became tedious.

Currently, his focus was on learning the spells [Foggy Mystique] which required 31 intuition to 'learn' with the [Tower's] method, [Greater Body Enhance] requiring 35 intuition, and [Greater Mind Enhance] requiring 40 intuition.

To keep it interesting, Otto would have one part of his brain focus on one of these three spells, while another part parsed a difficult magic array.

Still, he also knew that it would all be worth it once these spells became [Unlimited].

He especially looked forward to using his two self-enhancements.

Unlimited enhancement to his body and mind?

Who knew how strong Otto could become before a grueling battle?

Plus, these enhancements would give Otto endless methods to fight his enemies.

The problem was that all three of these spells were far too abstruse and complicated for Otto to learn with his now comparatively meager intuition.

Fortunately, with consistent practice, Otto's intuition did begin to rise once again.

So he kept on with it.

After twelve hours, when Otto felt his brain had become sufficiently mushy, it was time for him to switch gears once again.

After clearing the mission on the first floor, Otto realized that there were still several weaknesses in his combat style.

One of the biggest ones was his failure to actually achieve 'instantaneous casting.'

He took the opportunity to time himself casting all sorts of spells.

And was utterly appalled at his results.

Single casting the quickest spells in his arsenal, [Lesser Fireball: Unlimited] or [Ball of Light: Unlimited], took him 0.11 seconds.

Double casting two simple spells together took 0.19 seconds.

Dual casting two different simple spells took 0.26 seconds.

Since it took almost an additional tenth of a second to fully split his mind.

For an ordinary mage, these times were unbelievably fast, even for a mere fireball.

But Otto was incredibly displeased.

No wonder that purple robed woman in the underground cave was so easily able to interrupt him!

He rolled his eyes at himself. She must have felt she had ample time to interrupt...

Moreover, complicated spells such as [Swamp Ground] or [Wind Jump] would usually cost him in excess of half a second to cast.

Even at his very quickest, it still took between 0.48 and 0.51 seconds for them to release.

These numbers were unacceptable for Otto, and had even entered the realm of 'meaningful amounts of time' during high-speed combat.

It was even more embarrassing because there was no theoretical limitation on his casting speed at all!

Otto's eyes narrowed.

He made a decision.

By the time he finished his training, all his spells should take him well under a tenth of a second to cast, ideally around a hundredth of a second at most.

Fortunately, Otto knew how to achieve this.

Practice, practice, and practice some more!

The more Otto practiced casting such spells, the more his mana would get used to moving in these specific parts of his magic network, molding them and creating a type of 'network cache' which enabled him to 'load' spells increasingly quickly.

Over his last training session, Otto was perhaps too focused on making sure every spell was at Level 10 or above, and didn't pay much attention to his actual casting times.

But now, he spent two hours every day focusing on casting spell after spell at his maximum speed until his mana (and his mind) was completely drained.

He flopped down to the ground, exhausted.

But his day wasn't finished.

Before his mana started to refill once more, Otto right away began compressing the small amount of mana already in his mana pool to increase his magic power.

It was significantly easier to do with a small pool of mana.

As soon as his mana refilled, Otto compressed it, and then added it to his already compressed mana.

He then repeated this process over and over while continually cycling his mana, enhancing both his magic power and his regeneration.

Finally, after his mana had cycled through his magic network a number of times, which usually took a couple hours, Otto stood up and stretched once more.

It was time to practice his favorite part of each day.

Actual combat!

This was the second weakness he had noticed on the first floor: he was not equally strong in every combat scenario.

While his spells were excellent for certain types of combat, Otto often had more trouble facing a particularly powerful, lone enemy.

Otto also liked to take this opportunity to further train his mind and mentality.

The world shifted around him as Otto mentally disappeared from the mountain.

A small, grey cave lay out in front of him.

He looked to the left, and flinched, ever so slightly.

Jason was on one wall of the cave.

Eight stakes, two for each limb impaled his body, nailing him to the wall of the cave.

Blood puddled below where his feet hung limply, a meter or so above the ground.

Although it was a visual of Otto's own making, he did his best to convince himself that it was real, that this was truly his brother in front of him.

His heart beat faster in anger.

Otto was usually inordinately calm, a feature he particularly prized in himself, for it typically allowed him to make the best decisions in harrowing situations that would allow him to reach his goals.

This scenario was also his way of 'inoculating' himself to the emotions he would feel if his teammates were in trouble.

For a cool head was key to winning any battle.

After a second, a man walked out of the back of the cave.

"Oh a new experiment walked in of its own accord."

A twisted, large grin appeared on his face.

His tongue flecked out of his mouth, revealing a small fork in the middle.

The man's pupils were slitted.

He almost looked more snake than person.

Otto wasted no time in firing a testing [Wind Blade] at the man.

CLANG

The man didn't even bother to avoid it, letting it hit his body with the distinctive clang of what sounded like metal on metal.

Otto's eyes narrowed.

Just like usual, this would be a tough fight.